Foot and mouth disease (FMD)

Government agency makes sweeping statements based on what? They don’t know.

Following a reader’s query on 23 April, we raised some questions about the UK government's announcement to extend the ban on personal meat imports to protect farmers from foot and mouth. 

The announcement contained draconian restrictions on cattle and personal food imports justified as follows: “Whilst FMD poses no risk to humans and there are no cases in the UK, it is a highly contagious viral disease of cattle, sheep, pigs and other cloven-hoofed animals such as wild boar, deer, llamas and alpacas, and the outbreak on the continent presents a significant risk to farm businesses and livestock”.

As promised, we wrote to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to ask what evidence they were basing their statements on. We were bounced to the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), who answered on 28 April as follows:

To sum up: “IT DOES NOT AFFECT HUMANS, CAN YOU NOT READ??? WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS IS BASED ON BUT IT DOES NOT AFFECT HUMANS, DO YOU HEAR? IT DOES NOT …